


Red Water, Silver Sky

by Daephraelle



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: 'Medical' Use of Needles, Angst, Blood Magic, Fantasizing, Lucid Dreaming, M/M, Misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-11
Updated: 2014-12-11
Packaged: 2018-03-01 01:09:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2753969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daephraelle/pseuds/Daephraelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a heart's desire spell shows Derek (and an unseen Stiles) a little more truth than either of them were expecting, both are forced to confront how they really feel about each other.<br/>When the fantasy is taken away from Derek, it's up to Stiles to fix things between them, before their own fear of the unknown pushes them away from each other for good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red Water, Silver Sky

**Author's Note:**

> All French and Latin translations are thanks to Google and not my woeful high school French, and University Latin skills.

_If I could force my heart, my ears, my mind_

_And eyes to get in line_

_Maybe I’ll find something real_

_Not a fantasy so divine_

_Let myself down each time_

_How could you be what I want to see?_

_When my reality_

_Could never live up, could never live up_

_To the fantasy_

————————————————————

“I don’t know, that spell doesn’t sound safe,” Stiles argued as the rest of the pack, bar Lydia and Kira stood around Scott’s dining room table. “And I’m sure if Lydia were here, she’d back me up on that – no one wants me exploding everyone’s brains apart because my _very basic_ aptitude for magic, combined with this hinky spell book results in a magical lobotomy!”

“That’s not how magic works, Stiles,” sighed Derek, who was currently leaning against one of the dining chairs, with what Stiles though was a little too much confidence in its stability. Stiles knew for a fact (and from painful first-hand experience) that at least two of those chairs had near-collapsible legs and a back support that could very easily come apart, flinging you backwards until you came to rest staring uncomprehendingly at the ceiling, with spaghetti splattered all over your shirt.

“Oh and how would you know, Derek? You’re a _werewolf_ , not Samantha Stephens.”

Derek raised a sardonic eyebrow. “A sixties sitcom reference, Stiles _really_?”

_You managed to get it_ , Stiles thought, but he managed to refrain from saying it out loud. “The point is—”

“—No, _the point is_ that Lydia isn’t here, Stiles,” Scott interrupted, stepping away from the wall, his voice commanding, but laced with a hint of anxiety. “Neither is Kira. We’ve tried everything we can think of to track them down, and we’ve come up with _nothing_. That spell should work, it has to work. And even if it doesn’t, what’s the worst that can happen?”

There was a collective groan from the rest of the pack.

“Dude,” groaned Stiles. “You did not just say that! Rule of jinxes, Scott, rule of jinxes! If this does in fact kill everyone, I’m blaming you.”

“We can all blame each other later when we’re dead, for now let’s just get the ingredients we need for this spell,” said Derek.

“Well… there’s no need actually,” Stiles replied, flopping the heavy-bound book open in front of him. “We’ve got everything we need, I just have to, erm… take heart’s-blood from whomever we’re going to subject to— I mean include in the spell, add my… spark, or whatever it is that I have, and then cast it into a swift-flowing body of water while the owner of the blood speaks the words… ‘Conduis-moi à ma fantaisie, mon désir le plus profond. Prenez mon cœur et de le jeter dans les eaux du monde.’”

“Your accent is terrible,” Derek muttered.

Stiles turned to face him, eyes squinting judgementally. “Oh, well in that case, _Monsieur_ Hale, perhaps you can tell all of us poor, uneducated folk what the phrase actually means, since that’s probably something we ought to know before performing possible _brain-lobotomising magic_ with it.”

Derek went almost lightning-fast from judging-Stiles mode, to something that looked an awful lot like embarrassment – his gaze sliding away from Stiles as though he couldn’t quite look at him anymore.

“Derek?” Scott prompted gently.

“It ah, it means something along the lines of: ‘Lead me to my fantasy, my deepest longing. Take my heart and cast it into the waters of the world.’”

There was silence for a moment, with Liam and Parrish ( _Parrish? Jordan?_ Stiles still wasn’t sure what they were supposed to call the Deputy these days) looking as though they were very politely trying not to laugh. Malia, of course – burdened with no such social qualms, burst out giggling.

“That’s terrible!” she sniggered. “The ‘waters of the world’? Who writes like that?!”

“The French, apparently,” replied Stiles, trying not to grin at the flush of red that was creeping up Derek’s neck as he stared resolutely at the wall in front of him. “And now we know that the incantation _doesn’t_ mean, ‘give me your blood and I will arise, scoop out your brains, and use your skull as a drinking cup’… we should probably get this over and done with.”

“All right,” Scott said, baring his forearm and letting his claws manifest at the ends of his fingers. “Someone get a bowl.”

Stiles jumped forwards and pulled Scott’s arm away from the impending slash of claws. “No, no, no, no, no. One, we need to do this fresh, by water – I would suggest we go over to the stream that runs through the preserve. Two, the ah… ‘offerings’ have to be separate for each person that does them, and three...” Scott looked at him blankly, his arm still caught in Stiles’ grasp. “Three… _Heart’s_ -blood, Scotty. _Heart’s_ -blood.”

“So...”

“So, we’ll need to swing by the hospital and get your Mom to grab us a few heavy gauge needles.”

_It was probably a good thing that Scott hadn’t finished shifting_ , Stiles thought idly. _You mix red eyes with skin that green, and you’re gonna look like something Christmas threw up_.

————————————————————

“It can’t be that dangerous.”

“Yes, Stiles it really can, trust me. I’m sorry, but it’s gotta be supernaturals only on this one.”

“But I—”

“No,” Derek cut in. “Scott’s right. We’ll heal from a needle to the heart, you’ll most likely faint—

“—You mean collapse in a manly fashion.”

“I mean _faint_ , and then probably bleed to death internally.”

Stiles rolled his eyes and curled his lip up at Derek in a smile. “Such a ray of optimistic sunshine you are.”

“We still need you for the spell, Stiles,” Scott smiled tentatively, trying to reassure him. “We can’t do this without you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Stiles waved a hand dismissively and stepped towards the river, bright plastic picnic bowls in hand. “Buttering me up won’t help.”

“Does anything help with you?” Derek muttered as he looked away. “Get on with it, Stiles.”

“Sunshine, Derek. Sunshine,” Stiles sing-songed in reply – choosing to ignore Derek’s sudden, yet entirely familiar sour mood. He knelt down by the edge of the water and arranged the five bowls before him. “Right. Well, obviously Scott and, ahem… Parrish will have the best chance of their ‘deepest longings’ actually being Kira and Lydia,” Parrish blushed at little at that. “But the more chances we have the better, so Malia, Derek, and Liam line up and grab a bowl too and a… uh, scary looking needle and I will come around and play Vlad the Impaler.”

The needles were horrifically large, and even the usually stoic Derek Hale was looking a little apprehensive. Scott was first in line, holding the needle away from himself as though it were some kind of poisonous snake.

“Okay, dude. Are you ready?”

Scott scrunched his face up and nodded tightly, clasping the cheap plastic bowl to his body like a shield. Stiles tried not to smile – schadenfreud was not an acceptable reaction to a best friend’s pain – and stepped up to take the needle from Scott’s vice-like grip.

“So… your Mom said that I just angle it in this direction and slowly insert it in between the third and fourth ribs, and then—”

“—Oh my god, Stiles just do it!” Scott exclaimed.

“Right, sorry I just don’t want to screw this up.”

“He’ll heal if and when you do anyway, Stiles. Just get on with it,” Derek growled from the end of the line.

“Wait your turn, Derek,” Stiles replied. “I’ll screw up on you later.”

_Hmm, that really could have sounded slightly less… sexual,_ Stiles thought to himself, trying not to blush. Derek seemed to agree with him, if the clenched jaw, and single raised eyebrow were any indication.

Stiles sighed and tried not to let his heart rate rise – Derek should be used to his lack of brain-to-mouth filter by now, damn it. He turned back to face Scott. “Okay, close your eyes and think happy thoughts.”

The needle slid home relatively easily, aside from Scott’s low growl of pain. The blood drew easily as well, and soon Stiles was ejecting it carefully into the bowl.

“What now?” Scott asked hoarsely as he rubbed at the quickly fading bruise on his chest.

Stiles gestured for Scott to follow him to the water’s edge. “Now I infuse my ‘intent’, or my sparkly magic or whatever the hell it is into the blood and then you cast it into the water and speak that incantation.”

“But I don’t speak French.”

Stiles resisted the urge to slap a palm to his forehead. “Dude, I’ll hold the phrase in front of you, and you just speak the words as best you can – I’m sure intent is more important here than, you know skill.”

Derek snorted behind them.

“Shut it, you,” Stiles ordered, waving a hand behind him without turning around. “Okay, now just let me concentrate.”

He held the bowl of Scott’s blood in front of himself, and closed his eyes – imagining the power leaving his outstretched hand and flowing down into the pool of red beneath it. It was strangely similar to the feeling he’d had when he willed the circle of mountain ash to close.

Eventually it just felt right, the blood almost singing with intent, and Stiles handed it back to Scott with a nod, grabbing the piece of paper with the inscription on it from his pocket. “Okay, Scott just read this while you throw the blood, and think of what you most desire.”

Scott managed to speak his way through the incantation with only a few stumbles, but he sounded earnest, and surely that counted for something, Stiles thought hopefully.

“Now what happens?” Scott asked, before his eyes rolled up in his head and he dropped like a stone.

“Well… I think that’s supposed to happen?” Stiles murmured a little nervously.

“He looks like he’s dreaming, and his heartbeat’s steady,” Liam replied quietly.

“Well in that case, it’s your turn, buddy.”

Liam made a face and crossed his arms.

————————————————————

Liam had dropped just as quickly as Scott – and Malia and Parrish soon followed suit, Malia remarking to Stiles that all of this seemed unnecessary for two people who were already dead. _They’re dead, Stiles. We don’t need to use magic to find them – eventually we’ll catch the killers, or we’ll track down their corpses when they start to smell_.

_Firstly, she’s a Hale,_ Stiles had said to Derek, finger held up in the air when Derek had shot him a wordless look of disgust. S _o you can blame your weird family genes for her utter lack of social skills, and secondly, trust me when I say that_ this _is progress_.

Soon it was Derek’s turn, and Stiles stood before him, needle in hand, suddenly very desperate to be anywhere else but about to shove a large, metal spine into the heart of a man who had threatened him with bodily harm on more than one occasion.

“Well this should be fun,” Stiles said lightly and entirely unconvincingly, positioning the needle’s point against Derek’s olive skin.

“Just get on with it, Stiles.”

“Stop talking and I will,” Stiles huffed, hoping that his irritation was masking his spike of anxiety.

Derek let out a sigh and closed his eyes. Stiles was pathetically grateful – somehow the idea of Derek judging him while he stabbed him in the heart was more than a little off-putting.

When he slid the needle home, Derek clenched his jaw, expelling a short, sharp breath through his nose, but he made no other sound. “Well, aren’t you the brave soldier,” Stiles couldn’t help saying as he slowly drew the blood.

Derek cocked an eye open and glared at Stiles, but didn’t move.

“All right aaand… we’re done! Just let me magic this up and then you can go all French professor over it.”

“How did the universe think it was a good idea to give _you_ magical power?”

Stiles shrugged and closed his eyes, his hand hovering over the bowl. “How did it think giving you super wolfy powers was good idea? We may never know.”

There was a low growl, but Stiles was already tuning it out – all of his attention focussing on the blood and the ritual.

“Ok, here are the words and—”

Derek snatched the bowl from Stiles and stalked over to the river. “I don’t need the words, I remember them.”

He stilled by the water’s edge, his blood cradled between his hands, and began to speak. “Conduis-moi à ma fantaisie, mon désir le plus profond. Prenez mon cœur et de le jeter dans les eaux du monde.”

The pronunciation seemed flawless to Stiles’ untrained ear, and Derek cast the bowl away from himself, his blood arcing into the water in a red ribbon of colour.

“Feeling sleepy?” Stiles asked.

Derek rolled his eyes and stepped towards Stiles. “No I am not feeling sle—”

Stiles tried not to snigger as Derek fell face first into the leaf litter.

————————————————————

_It was boring watching your friends and packmates lie around and twitch in their sleep_ , Stiles thought to himself. _I should have brought something other than my phone_. Really, there were only so many times you could play Candy Crush before it got boring.

Malia kicked in her sleep and snorted, before falling back into relative stillness. Stiles shoved his phone back into his pocket listlessly, and stretched his legs out in front of him, reclining against a tree. He was bored and tired – six days of trying to find Lydia and Kira with very little sleep was finally catching up with him. The wolves seemed to be fine – Scott and Liam were as alert as they ever were at school, but Stiles was starting to feel the effects of too little sleep on a very human body.

His eyes slid closed once or twice, but he managed to jerk himself awake again each time. Then suddenly, he wasn’t in the preserve anymore, but somewhere soft, white, and gently glowing. The sleeping bodies of his friends had disappeared, all except for Malia, who was standing in front of him, very much awake.

“Malia?!” Stiles asked, puzzled, but Malia looked straight through him, seemingly looking for something on the non-existent horizon.

He stepped forward, waving his hand in front of her face, but there wasn’t even a flicker of recognition in her eyes. Suddenly she stepped forward, and Stiles stumbled backwards, nearly tripping up over his own feet, before Malia simply walked straight through him.

“Well that’s unnerving,” he said, his voice shaking a little.

“I know this place,” she breathed in awe, as around them the featureless white bled away, streaks of detail being painted like watercolours across the wide expanse of the world. Soon, the hazy splashes of colour resolved into the sandy yellows and browns of a desert, and in the distance one smudge of colour separated from the horizon and began to move towards them. Stiles darted a look towards Malia, tensing to run when he saw her smile slowly and take a hesitant step towards the moving shape that was quickly resolving into a low, slinking line of warm fur.

“Malia, wait we don’t know—”

Malia took off in a loping run, and Stiles cursed under his breath as he sprinted after her. When they came level with the animal, Stiles could see that it was a coyote – its rusty, black-tipped coat, and pointed snout leaving him in no doubt. Malia scented the air as she crouched down to meet the animal’s steady gaze, her eyes running blue as though they were being gently coaxed from her, rather than ripped out of her by the full moon.

The coyote yipped softly, and Malia called out in return, closing her eyes and smiling softly when the coyote moved forward and pressed its head against her chest. “It _is_ you,” she smiled, and the world went white once more.

————————————————————

Stiles seemed to wander alone in the white for a very long time, but as soon as he found Liam roving the great expanse of nothingness, the time fell away into seconds.

“Liam?” he ventured, but wasn’t surprised when he received no response. The boy was pacing, the line of his shoulders tense beneath his t-shirt. Stiles moved to stand beside him, thinking better of it when Liam stalked through him for the third time.

“C’mon man,” muttered Stiles. “Splishy splashy watercolours, go!”

Unsurprisingly nothing happened, and Stiles let out a groan of frustration. “Look, I don’t exactly know where we are, or whether we’re dreaming or something, but I was less bored watching the battery power go down on my phone.”

Something must have heard him, Stiles thought as Liam stilled and tilted his head sideways. Colours bled together once more, and manifested into the preserve at night, with only the moon, the stars, and the flickering burn of a campfire to light the way.

They were all there – Stiles could see himself and Scott lounging by the campfire, laughing as Scott set fire to what looked like another in a long succession of immolated marshmallows. Farther away, down by the stream, Kira and Malia were ankle-deep in the water, splashing each other and shrieking in delight when they scored a hit, but when Stiles looked more closely, he could see that Kira was fuzzy around the edges, the woods and water behind her almost invisible, her outline jagged against the background like a badly-pasted actor on a green screen. Lydia was the same where she sat with Parrish on a rug-covered log, smiling and flicking her hair. Liam made a noise where he still stood beside the real Stiles, and walked with hesitant steps towards the group. When he moved into the firelight, Derek looked up from where he sat on the opposite side of the fire, drink in hand and smiled.

“Liam!” the campfire-Stiles exclaimed happily as he looked up too, and beckoned Liam over. Scott smiled and added, “Where’ve you been man, we missed you!”

Liam smiled shyly at first, and then with greater strength as Lydia, Parrish, Kira, and Malia moved towards the fire as well, smiling happily and beckoning him forward. As they all sat down around the ring of stones, bathed in the warmth and the dancing light of the gently banked flames, Stiles could see Liam’s gaze drift over the pack before he gently closed his eyes, and leant his weight against Scott’s side. “It really _is_ you,” Liam whispered happily to the night as the tableaux faded into nothingness.

————————————————————

When Scott appeared, Stiles couldn’t even be bothered to look surprised.

“Hey, Scotty let’s get this show on the road, okay? If anyone can find Kira it’s you.”

Scott just stood there, looking lost and on edge all at the same time, and Stiles wished that he could reach out and reassure him. When the colours started to coalesce Stiles smiled and almost clapped Scott on the back anyway. “Okay, dude here we go!”

The fuzzy image began to slowly sharpen, but it was small, human sized, and the rest of the strange world remained resolutely white. Scott’s gaze narrowed quizzically. “...Kira?” he whispered.

Stiles smiled and moved towards the dark-haired figure as her face finally came into view.

“Oh, god,” he breathed.

“Allison?” Scott choked out in dismay. “I… Oh god, _Allison_?!”

She smiled at Scott softly, walking towards where he stood frozen, until they were face to face. “Hi, Scott I’ve missed you.”

Stiles darted a look at Scott and saw him speechless, an unreadable expression on his face, one hand reaching out towards Allison.

“I’ll always be here for you,” she continued, her eyes deep and full of emotion. “And I’m so proud of you, of how you’ve stepped up, how you’re looking out for all our friends – even the new ones I never met.”

Scott looked down at the misty white ground. “You should be here.”

“I am here,” she replied.

“Not for long. Not forever,” he whispered, refusing to look at her.

Allison grabbed Scott’s chin gently and guided his head up until it was level with hers. Leaning forward, she kissed him softly, slowly, whispering words against his lips that Stiles was bleakly relieved he could not hear.

When she drew back, Scott closed his eyes and leant forward, pressing their foreheads together, the ghost of a bitter smile playing on his lips. “It was always going to be you.”

Stiles whirled away, fists clenched by his sides. He could have gone the rest of his life without hearing that broken sound being torn from Scott’s throat.

————————————————————

By the time Parrish appeared, Stiles was well and truly sick of this dream-vision, or whatever the hell it was. “Alright, Parrish it’s all on you. Find Lydia so we can get the _hell_ out of here.”

Parrish was crouching down, one hand running across the insubstantial ground beneath him before he brought it up to his face, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together.

Stiles huffed in annoyance. “Once a cop, always a cop. C’mon on dude stop looking and start thinking!”

The world shimmered and refocused as the dark, muffled colours of an abandoned warehouse swam into view. Sat in one corner, her face shrouded by the fall of her auburn hair was the still form of a girl.

“Lydia!” Stiles exclaimed as he rushed forward, but there was no response.

Behind him, Parrish approached the scene more cautiously, one hand sliding towards his non-existent gun. As they both moved closer to the prone form, Stiles took the time to scan the room. It seemed to be your average abandoned warehouse – high ceiling, shattered windows, and dirty concrete as far as the eye could see. Stiles turned as a shuffling noise reached his ears from where the girl crouched in the corner. Parrish was there before Stiles could properly react, sliding to his knees in front of the girl and wrapping his hands gently around hers.

“Are you alright, Miss?”

The girl lifted her head and it was Lydia, smiling at the deputy, her hands clasped in his. “I’m fine, I’m always fine when you’re here to protect me.”

Stiles scoffed, almost annoyed that no one could hear his disparaging tone. “Dude, the only time that Lyds needs rescuing is when she maxes out her credit cards in the middle of a shopping spree, and there’s no way you can help with that on a cop’s salary.”

Parrish smiled, oblivious and slowly helped Lydia to her feet. “You’re special, Miss Martin. I think you know that.”

Lydia quirked a perfectly-shaped eyebrow and pursed her lips. “You’re not particularly average yourself – I don’t know of anyone else who could survive complete immolation.”

“I just… I feel like you need help. That… that something’s missing.”

Lydia ran the back of her fingers feather-light down the side of his face. “I’m right here, you just have to find me.”

Parrish closed his eyes at the touch of her hand. “I’ll always find you.”

————————————————————

It occurred to Stiles that really, he ought to wake up now. They’d found Lydia, now all they needed to do was figure out where that derelict warehouse actually stood – something he couldn’t very well do from inside his own magic-fuddled brain. And anything Derek would summon up as his own private fantasy wouldn’t exactly help with that either. Plus, if Stiles were brutally honest with himself, having a front-row seat to Derek’s deepest unconscious fantasies was something he could really do without.

As if his thoughts had conjured him, Derek smoked into existence before his eyes. Stiles scrunched his eyes closed, but not before he caught the scowl that spread across Derek’s face, and the tensing of his muscles as though he were waiting for an attack.

“Well, I guess with your track record you’re probably not safe from tragedy even in your own head,” Stiles remarked as he begrudgingly reopened his eyes.

Derek continued to glower, but his eyes were hesitant, almost anxious as he carefully paced from side to side, trying to scent the air. Stiles moved slowly in front of him, watching as Derek refused to stay still, refused to believe that he couldn’t understand this place simply by forcing it to submit to his will. For someone else, it might have been funny to see Derek so out of his element, but Stiles had seen him hurt, and afraid, and so utterly bereft of purpose before, and there was an almost physical pain whenever Stiles had the misfortune of witnessing it. Something about how it always stripped away that brittle veneer of confidence that Derek usually wore like fragile armour, leaving him raw and open to the world.

Derek’s head jerked up, his eyes flaring blue as colours and shapes began to form around them both. Stiles eyes narrowed as the preserve reappeared complete with stream, but empty unlike the giant group hug that had been Liam’s vision.

“What is this,” Derek growled, fangs and claws elongating as he tensed for a fight. Stiles shook his head a little – trust Derek to immediately go on the offensive. He watched as Derek moved around the clearing, heading down to the stream and back again.

_So this was Derek’s fantasy?_ Stiles thought despairingly. _An empty forest?_ Perhaps that wasn’t as strange as it sounded though – Derek wasn’t exactly a people person, and the preserve was essentially his childhood backyard – maybe this stillness was something he secretly yearned for?

Except that Derek wasn’t relaxing, wasn’t even taking in his surroundings really. Something was obviously still missing.

At the base of one of the spindly birch trees, a dark smudge began to form. Derek froze, staring at the spot as it seemed to smear through different colours and shapes until eventually it began to take what was very obviously a human form – first with bare legs, and then covered by jeans, its hair shimmering from long and dark, and blonde, and short, and brown… Each cycle it seemed close to settling on a single, unchanging form, before something washed away the image like acetone over paint.

Stiles looked over at Derek and saw that he was watching the harlequin of shapes and colours with an intensity that put all the rest of his dour expressions to shame. Each time the form almost resolved itself into something static, Derek’s eyes flickered, and his fists clenched punishingly hard at his sides.

It was almost as if...

_He doesn’t want to see it,_ Stiles realised. _Or see_ them _, more specifically. Even when it’s fuelled by magic, Derek Hale still manages to get in the way of his own happiness_ , he thought, with something dangerously approaching pity.

Well screw that. If getting out of here managed to coincide with showing Derek a glimmer of hope for his future, then all the better. He could fail to thank Stiles later.

_Except of course, it could be Paige… or his family_ , a traitorous voice in his head suggested. _Just like it was Allison. You really want to help shatter the little bit of peace he’s managed to cobble together over the years?_

“Shut up, me,” he muttered to himself as he walked towards Derek’s tense form.

The humanoid figure was still pinwheeling through its riot of shapes as Stiles drew up alongside Derek.

“Okay, Derek I know that our lives suck most of the time, and I know that hope can be a bitch to lose, but you have to believe that it’s better than having no hope at all. Look, there has to be a reason that I’ve been included in all these little mind-trips, right? Maybe if I can do this for you, I’ll have served some purpose, instead of just invading everyone’s private fantasies like some kind of creeper.”

Derek kept staring ahead, as though everything depended on keeping that palette of colour in front of him spinning. Stiles closed his eyes and focused his intent onto it. When it began to slow – the dark-haired, jean-clad image struggling to manifest itself – Stiles threw his will against Derek’s almost unconscious desire to wipe the image, wipe the _person_ away.

It was hard, _god_ was it hard – Derek had never lacked for will, but the image was staying, clarifying, even as Stiles swore he could hear the grind of enamel as Derek clenched his jaw. With a final push of power, Stiles held the morphing body clear of Derek’s last desperate shove of denial, and suddenly it was there, _he_ was there – since the body was definitely male – sneakers and jeans and what looked like Stiles’ own preferred tee-and-a-shirt ensemble.

It was only when Derek made a wounded, bitter sound beside him that Stiles made himself at the face that Derek had been so utterly desperate to avoid seeing.

He wondered why people always used the phrase ‘looking into a mirror’. It wasn’t like looking into a mirror at all, it was so much more disconcerting than that, because lying on the ground, with his back against the tree, was a man using Stiles’ smile, his eyes, his every movement as though he had torn away from the mirror and taken everything that belonged to Stiles with him.

“Did you even know,” the thief-Stiles said to Derek – his eyes full of the same wry humour that came to Stiles as easily as breathing.

“...Know what? Stiles, what are you doing here?” replied Derek, his voice strangled and confused.

Thief-Stiles stood up with a grace that was utterly beyond him in reality, and moved towards them. Derek took an unconscious step back, before he realised what he’d done, and planted his feet as though he were willing them to grow roots. He crossed his arms and watched thief-Stiles approach with an angry, shuttered expression.

“Did you know that it was me, Derek? Is that why you tried to push me away, or was it the thought of _anyone_ wanting you, needing you like that?”

Stiles’ eyes widened as he listened to his patently mad alter ego… which come to think of it, could only be an extension of Derek’s subconscious, which meant that _Derek_ was quite clearly the one who was insane.

Derek seemed to agree with Stiles as he grimaced and turned away. “This is insane.”

“Nope, just deeply buried wolf-man,” thief-Stiles replied, smiling. “And considering your, er… _difficulties_ in expressing human emotion like an adult, instead of like a teenage boy on the playground… well it kinda explains all the shoving, and head-slamming, and threatening behaviour.”

“No it doesn’t,” Derek and Stiles replied at the same time.

Stiles almost smiled, and turned to face Derek, a witty remark at the ready, but it died on his lips when he saw the look in Derek’s eye.

Maybe to the untrained observer it would just look like stubbornness and anger – and those emotions were definitely there in those green eyes – but beyond that, breaking through that brittle mask of bravado was fear. Pure, almost child-like fear.

The thief-Stiles could see it too, if the softening of his face were anything to go by. And maybe they weren’t so different, Stiles pondered. You know, apart from the whole I-need-you-I-want-you-Derek stuff.

The thief stepped closer. “There’s also all of that life-saving that you and I are so fond of. We’ve saved each other’s skins more often than the rest of the pack put together, sometimes, well _most_ of time at the expense of our own safety. We’re there for each other, we’re _always_ there...” He cocked his head at an angle that Stiles was intimately familiar with, and let all of his, all of _Stiles’_ love for his friends, his pack bleed into his tea coloured eyes. “I will _always_ be here for you.”

Then he smiled, and Stiles shuddered as though someone had slid a knife into his heart. He knew that smile – that was a special smile that only three people in the whole world had ever received. His father, Scott… his mother… That smile was love, and trust, and devotion, and _nothing_ that Derek had earned from him. It was, for all intents and purposes, the smile that laid his soul bare, and the thief had just given it away to someone who could so easily use it to hurt him, to climb through that window of open invitation and lay waste to his defences.

Stiles tensed like a rabbit ready to run for its life, ready for Derek to get angry or dismissive, or _anything_ from Derek Hale’s Grab Bag of Belligerent Emotions. Instead, as the thief-Stiles tilted his head forward, that damn smile still hovering earnestly on his face, Derek let out a sob that cracked, harsh and sharp in the air, as though something truly had broken inside of him. He leant his head forward until he and the thief… until he and _Stiles_ were pressed together, skin to skin.

“You can’t promise that,” he whispered. “You can’t promise you’ll always be here. Everyone leaves eventually, Stiles. Even you. Even you’ll leave in the end. Doesn’t matter how many times I save you. One day you’ll just be gone.”

“Oh, Derek,” Stiles said softly, even as the other Stiles rested a hand against Derek’s cheek and smiled sadly.

“Nothing’s permanent, Derek,” said the other Stiles. “I wasn’t given nearly as much time with my Mom as I should have had, and you weren’t given enough time with your family either. But I can tell you right now that I wouldn’t want to erase the pain of losing her if it meant I lost a _second_ of our time together. Would you?”

He rubbed a thumb across the line of Derek cheekbone, his other hand resting gently on the nape of his neck.

“No, I— What if you’re the last straw? What if I let myself feel something and you… you break me?”

“I won’t. Because I know what being broken feels like, Derek. And I know how strong we both are apart, so imagine how strong we can be together.”

They were still so close to each other, so it shouldn’t have been surprising when Derek jolted forwards and pressed his lips to the other Stiles’ mouth. Stiles blinked, something strange and painful curling through his chest as the other Stiles, _Derek’s_ Stiles sighed contentedly, Derek inhaling it like a dying breath. He let his hand come to rest against his Stiles’ neck, and Stiles could swear he felt something – heat seeping into his skin below his ear and running down his spine like warm honey. He shivered.

“How can it possibly be you?” Derek whispered as he caressed the hollow of Stiles’ throat with the pad of his thumb. Stiles flinched at the shattered tone of Derek’s voice. He sounded like a man who has nothing left to lose and fears it anyway.

————————————————————

Derek awoke, and with the last of the dreams tied to his magic completed, so did Stiles. The others had obviously been awake for a while – grouped together as Stiles staggered to his feet, studiously ignoring Derek, who was violently pushing himself away from the ground like a man struggling free of an embrace.

Stiles flushed – the analogy was uncomfortably accurate, and he focused on Scott instead, who was walking towards him, his eyes shadowed and guilty. In a split-second of decision, Stiles made the choice to keep all of his experiences to himself. In no universe did Scott deserve to have his lost love rubbed in his face.

“Hey,” Stiles called out. “Did you find them?”

Stiles tried to ignore the flash of pain that crossed Scott’s face as he replied. “Yeah, Parrish saw Lydia – he thinks he knows where she’s being kept, some old warehouse. Apparently they get a lot of kids loitering there, so he recognised it from his rounds.”

Stiles smiled weakly. “Pays to have a cop on board, huh?”

Scott barely smiled in reply. “Yeah. So, uh… Did the spell knock you out too?”

“Yeah, yeah I think it must have used my sleep to fuel the spell, or something. I can tell you right now that I didn’t see any fantasy of mine,” he replied vehemently.

Scott nodded solemnly. “Yeah, no one seems to want to talk about what they saw – even Parrish only gave us the details of the location.”

“Well it’s probably for the best anyway,” Stiles replied, slapping Scott on the back reassuringly. “It’s not as if it was real – it was all just in your heads, just a fantasy. It doesn’t _mean_ anything.”

“I— I know,” Scott replied.

The others had drifted over to join them, only Derek remaining conspicuously apart as he stood, arms wrapped around himself, staring at the tree Stiles had been sleeping against.

So it was a little surprising when Derek spoke.

“Reality and fantasy are two different things. Fantasies are perfect, safe. That’s the point of them. Reality is different. You try to bring a dream to life, all you’ll get is disappointment and a cold dose of truth. And along the way you’ll destroy the fantasy.”

He turned to face them all, his gaze diffused, never settling on any of them. “I suggest you leave whatever you saw behind in this clearing. Don’t look back.”

With that Derek strode off towards his car. Stiles stood, frozen for a moment, watching the solid line of Derek’s back as it disappeared through the tree line. _Don’t look back, don’t look back…_ Stiles looked down at his hands. Why was he clenching his fists so hard that his knuckles were white? He shook himself and turned to Scott.

“C’mon,” he said a little shakily, “Let’s go save the girls.”

————————————————————

He wasn’t really sure that they needed a meeting simply to all agree that the threat of the rogue omegas had passed, but if the giant stack of pizzas, and a startling array of alcohol and accompanying music were anything to go by, it was going to be more of a ‘we’re not dead’ party rather than anything tactical.

“Dude, I don’t care if you’re the one true alpha to rule them all, you _cannot_ eat three large pizzas on your own.”

Scott just grinned in reply and loped over to the stack of steaming pizzas. Stiles shook his head, and headed over to the impromptu ‘bar’ that Lydia and Kira had set up against one of the rather depressing walls in Derek’s loft.

“Stiles!” Kira exclaimed happily. “We’re having a party!”

“Yeah,” Stiles laughed. “I can see that. So uh…” He swung around to look around at their very small party and its one glaring absence. “Where’s the host of this shindig?” he asked, trying to keep his voice light and unconcerned.

Kira stared at him, uncomprehending.

“ _Derek_. Where’s Derek?”

“Ohhh,” she laughed. It was possible, Stiles thought to himself, that Kira had already made a start on the wolfsbane wine. “Yeah, no. He was around here before… maybe he’s getting more pizza!”

“Yeah, well with Scott’s appetite tonight that’s probably a good thing,” Stiles muttered as he watched Scott shove two pieces of pizza into his mouth at the same time.

“I think he’s sulking in his ‘bedroom’,” Lydia sighed as she walked past them, drink in hand. Even without the visual cues, Stiles could see the inverted commas.

“Figures,” Stiles replied and swiped a beer from the table, tipping it back roughly as he tried to blot out the vision of soft lips pressed to his.

————————————————————

Stiles groaned as he threw himself face down on Scott’s bed and tried not to suffocate into the pillow. It had been three months since they’d managed to find Kira and Lydia where the two, slightly unbalanced omegas had stashed them, and two-and-a-half months since Stiles, Scott, and Liam had forced said wolves out of Beacon Hills through a mixture of diplomacy and dire threats. Now, it seemed that the last few months were catching up to him, magnified as they were by a pile of homework the size of Alaska, and a more psychotically invigorated Coach than usual.

“So much for your plan to play CoD ‘until our eyeballs bleed’.”

“ _Ugghhh_ ,” was all Stiles could manage in reply.

There was a heavy _whump_ as the bed dipped and Scott sat down beside him.

“Why don’t I just put a movie on and we can veg out? I’m kinda _done_ after that run Coach made us do.”

Stiles reared back and rolled his eyes as the uncaring pillow. He was pretty sure that Scott could run a freaking _marathon_ and still be up for twenty rounds of… well _anything_. Stupid werewolf stamina. Still, he appreciated the gesture and dragged himself upright with an overly melodramatic amount of effort.

“ _Dude_.”

Stiles shoved a hand in Scott’s face. “Shut up, I can barely feel my legs.”

Scott smirked and set up his laptop, calling up something random from his hard drive. “Are you staying over tonight?”

“Considering I’ll probably be asleep in ten minutes, yeah?”

“That’s cool – I’ll get Mom to let your dad know.”

“And grab the Horror Mattress!” Stiles called out as Scott left the room.

“And grab the Horror Mattress,” Scott echoed back, laughing.

————————————————————

Stiles had been right – a few minutes into the movie, even the discomfort of the Horror Mattress hadn’t been enough to keep him awake. He dreamt of a hazy mix of the supernatural and school. Coach was on the lacrosse field, trying to get Jackson to jump higher using his kanima superpowers. It was a solid strategy, considering the goal was now fifteen feet in the air, and shaped more like football goals. Then Stiles was at his locker, trying to remember the new combination that Lydia and Derek had decided to put on the padlock. He was failing because the numbers weren’t numbers, they were symbols, and they hadn’t done those symbols in Math yet.

And then… And then...

And then he was in a white expanse, amorphous and endless, and Scott was standing beside him.

“No… No, no, no, this can’t be happening. We’ve _done_ this. This is _over_.”

Scott was watching the non-existent horizon, a look of anticipation on his face.

“Scott? Scott what are we doing here?”

Just as before there was no reply from his friend, only the soft, hopeful look curving his mouth upwards as one part of the white nothingness became _something_ , became a figure, became Allison.

“Scott,” she smiled, her heart-shaped face as strong and open as Stiles remembered.

“Allison,” Scott replied, moving forward to hold her, kiss her, bury his face in the fall of her hair. He drew back. “I wish I could smell you.”

Allison laughed. “What, you want me to shower less?”

Scott smiled faintly. “No, I mean I wish I could smell you at all. I miss the smell of your hair, your skin. I miss the way you _taste_.”

Stiles jerked away, mortified. Whatever this was, it wasn’t something that anyone else should be hearing. It was private, so private, and this stupid place wouldn’t let him escape.

Perhaps if he just walked away from Scott? Would he stop hearing? Would it break the connection between him and Scott and wake them? Or would it simply break the connection and leave Stiles stranded here in this snow-white nothingness?

“ _How do I live without you?_ ”

That was it – _anything_ was better than this. Stiles turned and started walking as quickly as he could away from those whispered words. For a while there was nothing, until suddenly there was a tug at his heart, as though he were stuck fast to one end of a long stretch of bubble gum. A little farther, his steps faltering as the elastic pressure built behind him and then there was a sudden slack and the sense of something hurtling towards him.

And Stiles snapped awake in the dark of Scott’s bedroom, Scott rearing upright, gasping for breath like a drowning man on his bed.

“Scott, what _was_ that? How did you get back there? _How did you see Allison again_?”

“I...” Scott had his head in his hands, his sheets rucked up around him. “I just went back like— Wait, how do you know where I went? How do you know about Allison?!”

_Damn_. “Because I was there the first time, Scott. I saw _everyone’s_ fantasy, okay? Yours, Malia’s… Derek’s… I was like an invisible witness – a horrified, invisible witness. Only… the spell’s done now, so why the hell did it just reappear?!”

Scott suddenly looked guilty. “I… I’ve been dreaming about her every night since the spell. I think since it’s designed to help you find what you most want, it keeps re-occurring until you find it, or them. But since… because Allison’s...”

“...You can never find her,” Stiles finished quietly.

Scott nodded miserably.

“So why haven’t I been in everyone’s visions each night? Why only now?”

“Maybe you need to be nearby? This is the first time you’ve slept in close proximity to one of us since the spell.”

Stiles nodded, and then suddenly shook his head in disbelief. “If— If it’s like this for everyone, an eternal loop of something they don’t, or can’t have – I mean, apart from Parrish presumably, since he found what he was looking for – then why has no one come to me? Why does no one think that this is an incredibly _bad_ turn of events?”

“Would you?” Scott replied gently. “If it were your fantasy, your innermost desire would you want it to go away?”

“Well they have to!”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve seen what they dream, Scott!” Stiles exclaimed. “Every night! That’s not healthy, okay? Having that shoved in your face every night, having to go through that kind of emotional pain—”

“I’m not in pain, Stiles,” Scott said earnestly.

“Not you, De—” Stiles stuttered into silence before clenching his jaw tight. “No. No I _do_ mean you, Scott. It doesn’t matter whether you feel pain or not, it’s not _healthy_. You can’t live for a dream, especially an unattainable one, and I’m sorry, but Allison is just that, she’s _gone_. What about your life, what about _Kira_?”

Scott started guiltily.

“Yeah. You were doing okay before all this crap. You were slowly moving on, like you’re supposed to, like Allison, the _real_ Allison would want.”

“Is this… thing even undoable?” Scott asked miserably.

“Maybe. I don’t know. We can ask Deaton, which is probably something we should have done in the first place.”

Scott nodded, his expression firming, resolving into that of a leader, an alpha. “We’ll call him in the morning.”

“Okay,” Stiles replied. “Let’s… let’s try and stay awake until then.”

————————————————————

It took a week, a whole damn week to find something that would negate the effects of the spell. Scott let Malia and Liam know what would happen, without letting on that Stiles knew exactly what they’d both been dreaming. When Scott asked about Derek, Stiles had replied that he knew what Derek had seen and trust him – he’d be relieved when he stopped having to live it every night. _Don’t look back, don’t look back…_ If he had questions, or worries he’d come and see them after it was all done, but _trust him_ , Derek would totally be on board with this – no need to ask.

Scott had side-eyed Stiles pretty hard after that, but as usual he deferred to Stiles on matters that involved magic – never mind the fact that Stiles felt Scott’s confidence in his magical competence was woefully misplaced. In any case it worked in Stiles’ favour today. He’d and Derek had managed to avoid each other ever since Stiles had watched him fall into what amounted to Stiles’ own arms in the dream-vision. And while Scott had been the picture of discretion with Malia and Liam, Stiles was desperate not to risk a slip of the tongue around Derek. The idea of him finding out that Stiles, the real Stiles had seen a version of himself – a version that if Stiles were honest with himself was not too far off who he really was – cradle Derek’s head in his hands as though it were a precious object, smile as though it was just the two of them together against the world… _Don’t look back_ …

Derek didn’t want it, not really and it was just Stiles’ obsessive personality that kept the memory of the two of them together playing over and over in his head.

In the end it was over quickly – a swipe of a paste made from mineral water, earth, seeds, and ash across Stiles’ chest where the heart’s blood was symbolically drawn, along with a few words of French and it was all done.

Scott reported feeling no different though, so just to be sure he stayed over at Stiles’. That night both of them slept – deep, and dreamless.

————————————————————

He didn’t really have a routine at bedtime – so many years of running and fighting, of having to be ready to chase after monsters in the middle of the night – it had all left him with a rather irregular sleeping pattern. Sometimes he’d be awake until three in the morning, other times he’d go to bed at seven – it usually depended on how much mortal peril he’d been in the day before.

So no, Derek didn’t usually have a routine before bed. Not usually.

He had for the last three months, though.

Every night he’d begun to wander – from the kitchen, where he’d pour himself a glass of milk; into what passed for a living room in the loft, where he’d sit on the tattered couch, slowly drinking. After that he’d move into the bathroom, wash his face, brush his teeth… stare at his reflection in the mirror until he wasn’t quite sure where it ended and he began…

Then and only then he would head over to the expanse of dirty windows where his bed stood, and lie down, bare-chested, sheets draped across his hips, eyes closed waiting for that inevitable drop into unconsciousness.

Waiting to fall into that bleak, white space. Waiting for him.

Tonight was no different. Derek finished his glass of milk and padded barefoot into the bathroom to stare moodily at his reflection.

“Don’t smile, don’t over think this, and _don’t hope_ ,” he growled at the mirror. “It’s just a dream, just a distracting dream.” He gripped the frame of the mirror hard – the old, paint-peeled wood creaking beneath his fingers. “It’s not real; you don’t want this to be real. It’s not him. It’s Not. Him.”

His bitter mantra done, Derek moved to his bed and lay flat on his back, his eyes boring holes into the dark concrete ceiling high above him. Through the window behind him, the crescent moon flickered in and out of view from between silvered scudding clouds, lulling Derek down into sleep with its cool, silent light.

He dreamt of wolves in the forest, and fires racing through the streets of New York, but no Stiles, no white expanse. When he woke in the early hours of the morning, tangled in his sheets, curled into himself, he felt the absence of company – as though he’d become used to the strange, phantom feeling of _someone_ almost-waking beside him.

If he were truly honest with himself, he had.

————————————————————

He tried napping at noon, and again in the afternoon. By the time evening fell once more – the moon rising to mock his jagged loss of serenity, Derek was pacing the loft, energised by the anger and fear that springs from something lost before it was ever really held. He was as far from sleep as it was possible to get. Wrenching a shirt over his head he stalked out of the loft and began to run, faster, and longer, and harder than he’d let himself run in years, since he’d truly been running for his life, running from the flames, running from Kate.

When he finally surfaced – drenched in sweat and badly winded, he was standing amongst the willowy, shadowed forms of saplings – the shallow stream burbling past, dark and translucent in the night. Derek almost laughed at his own twisted internal compass, but he moved instead to the water’s edge, and drank as deeply as his body would let him, before he dragged himself over to a painfully familiar tree.

Exhausted and skirting the edge of denial, Derek curled around the base of the tree, the furnace of his body already warming the leaf litter beneath him. If he didn’t manage to dream the fantasy here, he was certain that he’d never dream it again.

His eyes drew closed as his breathing returned to normal, and the sounds of the preserve finally reached him past the slowing hammer of his heart. He thought of tea-coloured eyes and an infuriating smile as he willed the world to be white behind his eyelids.

When he woke the next morning, Derek walked out of the preserve and didn’t look back.

————————————————————

“Dude… have you seen Derek around lately?”

Stiles turned to Scott, who was standing by his lacrosse locker, his hair still wet and shaggy from the shower, and tried not to look guilty. “Um, no not since the whole ‘we’ve chased off the evil omegas, let’s have a meeting slash party to celebrate’ thing a few months back. Why?”

“I dunno. It’s just… usually he checks in occasionally, even when we’re not facing imminent death. It’s just not like him, man.”

Stiles rubbed gingerly at the nape of his neck. “Maybe he’s just relaxing, you know? Making the most of our current lack of mortal peril.”

Scott didn’t look convinced. “I dunno… Maybe we should swing by the loft and just check up on him. I mean, the last time he went radio silent he’d been kidnapped by his psychotic werepanther ex-girlfriend.”

“You’ve got a point,” Stiles begrudgingly admitted – the thought of Kate and the systematic destruction she had wrought upon Derek’s entire life dancing in ugly patterns before his eyes. Stiles had been given a front-row seat to the scars that Kate had left etched into Derek’s psyche, so yes, maybe it wasn’t Stiles’ fault, and maybe Derek couldn’t stand to look at him anymore, but whether he liked it or not, Stiles _was_ in the business of saving Derek Hale. Physically, mentally, emotionally… These days Stiles just couldn’t bring himself to let Derek get hurt when there was anything he could do about it.

_Imagine how strong we can be together_ …

Stiles shook his head and grabbed his bag out of his locker. “Alright man, let’s go check if Sourwolf is home.”

————————————————————

The loft was quiet as Stiles and Scott entered through the heavy sliding door. Derek’s home was desolate at the best of times, but now the silence was eerie, almost oppressive.

“Derek?” Scott called. There was no response, and Scott tilted his head, eyes unfocused as he listened beyond the confines of the room. “I think he’s upstairs,” he whispered.

Stiles nodded silently and moved towards the rusted spiral staircase, craning his head upwards as he slowly made his way up the steps. He paused at the top. “Derek?”

Nothing. Not even the whisper of a voice echoed back to him. He looked back down at Scott who stood poised at the base of the stairwell and shrugged.

“I can hear someone breathing,” Scott murmured.

“So he’s not dead, then,” Stiles remarked. “That’s gotta be a positive.”

Moving forward, he scanned the space in front of him. He’d never been into the upper part of the loft before – who knew what was up here. Bedroom? Batcave? Angsty emotional retreat for surly werewolves? He paced forward slowly, rounding a heavy, concrete slab of a wall and was met with the sight of a large dark bed, shunted up against the grimy fully-length windows on the far wall.

“ _Dude_ ,” Scott whispered as he came up behind him.

“What?” Stiles replied, confused. “It’s a bed.”

“No. _On_ the bed.”

Stiles squinted and shuffled closer, trying to see in the dim evening light. There was, perhaps, the suggestion of hunched form near the centre of the bed, but nothing he could pick out with his pathetic human eyesight. He moved forwards, until his knees were almost touching the mattress.

“Derek, man is that you?”

“ _Derek_.” Scott had joined him by the bed and was using his best Alpha voice. There was a low growl in response.

“Well at least we know it’s Derek now,” Stiles said.

“We know it’s Derek because I can _smell_ it’s Derek,” Scott replied.

Stiles wrinkled his nose. “Well, actually I think _everyone_ can smell it’s Derek. Dude, when did you last take a shower?”

“Go away.”

“He speaks!” Stiles quipped, trying to cover the undercurrent of disquiet he was feeling. What the hell was wrong with him? Why the hell was he huddled in the middle of his bed? True, Derek had always been a bit of a recluse, but this was taking it to weird and disturbing extremes. “Come on, man what’s the problem?”

“Go. Away. Stiles.”

Well, if that wasn’t a clear desire to be left alone, he didn’t know what was. Scott, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have gotten the message.

“Derek, no one’s heard from you in weeks. Are you okay?”

Stiles leant forwards and put one hand down on the bed, palm flat against the cotton sheets. The hunched figure in the centre of the bed shifted slightly. Flinched, Stiles was almost tempted to say. This close the figure was far more Derek-shaped – there was his dark shirt, his dark stubble that was rapidly becoming a full-blown beard… His eyes were hidden though – his head tucked between his knees and arms wrapped around his legs. Unthinking, Stiles reached out with his other hand and closed it gently over Derek's shoulder.

“Derek—”

There was a snarl and Stiles snatched his hand away as Derek threw himself off the far side of the bed. Scott was already pulling Stiles behind him and settling into a defensive stance.

“Derek, what the hell is going on?” Scott growled. “Is this another weird magical thing? Is it wolfsbane? Are you poisoned or something?”

Derek laughed – a short, sharp, entirely bitter sound and walked away from them towards the only door in the room. A terrible, world-shifting possibility began to occur to Stiles as Derek walked into the bathroom and slammed the door closed behind him. He turned to face Scott, who was still staring at the peeling white paint of the closed door, a puzzled looked etched onto his face.

“I can’t tell if this is pack business or not,” Scott whispered as he turned to Stiles. It was pointless to whisper, really. Derek was going to be able to hear everything they said, no matter how quiet they were. That’s if he was bothering to listen, of course.

“I’m, ah… I’m pretty sure it isn’t,” Stiles replied hesitantly. “And I don’t think he’s poisoned or anything either.” He sighed, defeated and dropped a heavy hand on Scott’s shoulder. “I also think I’m the only one that can… ‘fix’ this. Or, I dunno – at least get him showering again, that’d be a start.” He wrinkled his nose.

Scott shook his head, stubborn and confused. “No, we can—”

Stiles huffed impatiently. “Look, Scotty I’m pretty sure this is my fault… or at least my mess. You gotta trust me, I’m not in any danger, and I’m pretty damn sure that he’s not going to talk while you’re still here.”

Scott stood his ground, his mouth set in a doubtful, stubborn line. Stiles smiled tiredly, and gently shook his friend. “This isn’t supernatural crap, okay? Well, it was kinda _caused_ by the supernatural, but this fallout is totally about human issues, not wolfy ones.”

Scott stood silent for a moment before exhaling noisily. “You call me the second anything goes wrong, Stiles.”

Stiles stood back and crossed his heart with his finger like he was signing his name with a flourish. “Scout’s honour. Or, you know, lacrosse players honour, since we were never in the Scou— oh forget it,” he chattered as he backed away towards the bathroom door. “I’ll call you when it’s all over.”

“Yes you will,” Scott replied in his steadiest, most authoritative Alpha voice.

————————————————————

At first Stiles just sat against the flaking paint of the door in silence – trying to figure out what to say, what had happened to Derek in the last three months. After a while, he began to pick up the quiet sounds of breathing on the other side of the flimsy wood. Close to the door, then. That was a good sign, right?

“Okay, big guy. I’m going to take a wild stab in the dark and say that this has something to do with that magical dreamwalk we all took a while back?” The breathing on the other side of the door hitched for a moment before resuming its steady rhythm. Stiles exhaled noisily and ran a sharp hand through his hair. “Alright. Okay. So I’m going to go further and say that you kept having your dream-vision _looong_ after we finished the spell, like, right up until a couple of weeks ago, yeah? And then suddenly, one night there was nothing… And there’s been nothing ever since. Right?”

Was it just his imagination or was Derek breathing faster, heavier? Stiles took a shaky breath and continued. “Well that’s probably because around two weeks ago we figured out a way to put the dreams to rest properly – you know, for those of you who hadn’t found their ‘heart’s desire’ or whatever. And we— _I_ didn’t tell you because I was pretty damn sure that you wanted those dreams gone, so if one night it just didn’t appear, you’d happily go on with your life doing… well, whatever you spend your days doing when we’re not being attacked by the monster of the week. I mean, I had all the evidence to support the fact that you wanted m— it gone, but I’m kinda guessing that something went wrong somewhere. Because you should be relieved, and you sure as shit don’t seemed relieved to me.” He tilted his head sideways until it was resting against the door, and pressed his forehead against the battered wood. “And I’m not sure if I can help you or whatever, but I know I should have told you we were ending the spell. That’s on me. I know.”

The loft fell silent once more, save for the quiet murmur of breath, and Stiles closed his eyes as the wood of the door warmed against his skin.

“Do you know what I dreamt?”

There was a moment when Stiles desperately thought about lying – or at least stretching the truth a little to make it slightly less mortifying – but Derek had been lied to enough. Derek was _always_ lied to – by friends, enemies… _family_. Really, it was amazing he had as few trust issues as he did.

“Yeah. Yeah I do, Derek.”

There was the sound of shuffling past the door. “There’s only one way you could know that.”

“Yeah there is.”

“Was… Was it you, then?”

Stiles’ eyes widened and he pulled his head away from the door, his hands too since they’d somehow made their way to press against the wood. _The feel of heat flowing down his spine, soft lips and contented sighs, and a quiet ache in his chest._ “…No. No it wasn’t me. I was there, like an invisible bystander. I could see it all, but it wasn’t— _he_ wasn’t me,” Stiles mumbled.

“Just a fantasy, I knew it was just a fantasy, it wasn’t real,” Derek muttered to himself. “It was better that way, safer. It didn’t have to _mean_ anything, I didn’t have to _hope_.”

_Hope_? No, no. Derek had been freaked out by the vision, he’d rejected it. _Don’t look back, don’t look back…_ How could Stiles have misread this whole thing so badly?

There was a heavy breath and suddenly Derek’s voice was louder, right on the other side of the door, and very definitely aimed at Stiles. “But of course it ended up meaning something – seeing you every night for _months_ – like I finally got to go home every night. Do you know I can name every poster on your wall now? I can tell you how many shoes you keep scattered around your closet door?”

Stiles swallowed heavily – he hadn’t thought about where the dreams would take place, but it made sense – wherever he was at night… He shut his eyes and wondered just what he and Derek had done in his bedroom…

"And then one night it just stopped. And I didn’t even get the fantasy anymore. Just the reality. So I moved on – as if some pointless make-believe ever really mattered.” Derek sighed, turning it into a groan as he dropped his weight against the door. “Except I still dream about you. Only now my whole mind gets to participate, so I get to watch you drown, and get bitten, and bleed out… and _burn_ …”

Stiles swore under his breath and opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. What could he possibly say? What did he even _want_ to say?

“You know I never dreamt of you before all this,” Derek said – his tone deceptively conversational. “I never even thought of you that way, I don’t think. At first I thought the spell must have screwed up, or the fact that you cast it coloured what I saw somehow. But then… Ugh, you were so _persuasive_ , like you _always_ are, and I let myself… I don’t know. Believe? Feel? Maybe it’s always been there – ever since you saved Cora. No, ever since the pool. Holding me up for hours, coming back for me… understanding the difference between what I am, and what Jackson was… You’re just, you’re always _there_ , Stiles like a burr under the skin. And I could ignore it, I was _fine_ until you— until that spell made me see, made me understand. For months. And now it’s gone, but I can’t _unsee_ it, Stiles.” He scoffed. “And I thought Kate torturing me was painful.”

Stiles flinched in shocked and scrambled away from the door. So, what? Derek had complicated feelings for him? Well join the freaking club, apparently. Oh, and being equated to a mass murdering psychopath? Well, that was always good for the guilt levels.

“I’m like a burr, huh?” Stiles said, voice like gravel. “Well, you wanna know what you are, huh? You want to _understand_ how I see you?” he bit his lip and clenched his fists. “You’re like a forest fire, Derek – you’re… you’re beautiful, but you’re deadly. You can love the way a fire looks, the way it acts, but you don’t get close. You don’t touch it. That kind of power consumes everyone – especially plain old humans like me with terrible senses of self-preservation.”

Fire, oh god what was he thinking using _fire_ as analogy? He might as well have described Derek’s family’s deaths to him. Oh, and also you destroy everything you touch, but don’t worry, Derek, I’m here to make you feel better. Stiles curled his lip in self-loathing and slowly staggered to his feet. He took two steps towards the stairwell when Derek spoke.

“I know.”

All of his anger drained away as Stiles came to a faltering stop. It had always been there – the self-sacrificing moments, the hopeless fatalism, everything that Derek had ever done when faced with pain or death or loss. _Everyone leaves in the end, Stiles_. It occurred to him with sudden blinding clarity that Derek had probably been expecting this hopeless outcome since the moment he and Scott stepped through the door. Damn it, he’d probably been expecting it since he first found Stiles, smiling underneath that tree.

He let Derek’s words hang in the air for a moment as he slowly turned around and stared at that that damn door. “No. No, no, no you _don’t_ know, Derek. Goddamn it, I shouldn’t have said that, and you sure as shit should have called me on it.” He strode up to the door and wrenched it open. “Man, what did that stupid spell do to you?!”

He was just a dark shadow, half slumped on the floor where he’d lost the support of the door. Stiles crouched down beside Derek, fighting the urge to place a hand on his shoulder. “I just… I— I don’t know what you want from me, Derek. I don’t even know what _I_ want from _you_. I just… I know that this is wrong, seeing you so… broken is just _wrong_. And it’s like that other me said – we kinda have a habit of saving each other, so you know… let me help, _please_.”

“This isn’t mortal peril, Stiles,” Derek whispered. “This isn’t something that anyone can ‘save’ me from.” He shifted besides Stiles until suddenly he was standing, looming over him. “Just go. I need you to just go now, Stiles.”

Stiles scrambled to his feet, his hand reaching out for Derek before he could really think it through. “Derek…”

“Please?”

When had Derek ever asked Stiles for anything, especially in such a crushed tone? Something stubbornly perverse in Stiles’ mind dug in and refused to give up. “Just… Why won’t you let me help you, Derek?” Stiles asked plaintively. “This whole thing is my fault from start to finish, just… I need to help!” _I need to do something_ , he thought. _I just don’t know what that something is_.

Derek look at him through the gloom and let his hands fall gently to his sides, instead of braced across his chest in the way that Stiles was depressingly used to. “You can’t help, Stiles because what I want from you, you can’t give. This isn’t your fault, but having you here when I— Having you here makes things worse, not better.”

Stiles gripped his own elbows tightly and looked away – the memory of watching Derek’s lips on his through the dappled light of the woods playing over and over in his head. “Look, I know that I wasn’t expecting… I— I’d never thought of you that way either, but I…” _What? I can’t stand seeing you so sad? I can’t stop remembering how you looked in that clearing?_

_…Seeing you kiss me made the blood rush to my head like a shot of whiskey?_

Stiles shook his head and realised that his heart was racing. “The other Stiles wasn’t that different from me, you know. He was like a ‘me’ who’d been allowed to see the whole picture. Maybe I can— I mean maybe if we try—”

“ _Don’t_.” Derek cut him off angrily. Definitively. He met Stiles’ gaze and spoke again, softer this time. “Don’t.”

Stiles exhaled shakily, the strange, alien bubble of hope in his chest fizzling away to nothing. “I— Okay… Okay.”

The sound of the loft’s heavy, rusted door shrieking closed behind him haunted Stiles all the way home.

————————————————————

Stiles whirled around in his twisted bed sheets for the hundredth time, before checking his phone again. Two in the morning. Still. Sighing dejectedly, he sat up and ran a hand through his sweaty hair. Another restless night with his mind going a mile a minute. Two weeks of distraction in his classes and insomnia in his bed – much more of this and Stiles swore he was going to have a meltdown.

It wouldn’t be so bad if his mind was flitting around all over the place – at least that would be diverting. But no, every night it was the same thing over and over. Just the one line of thought, the one face. Why couldn’t he let this go? I mean, sure he was a mess of guilt and other, more confusing emotions, but what he’d truly wanted was for Derek to be okay, and from all accounts he was getting there – slowly beginning to return to the outside world, and the occasional meeting with Scott (of which Scott would tell him nothing, goddamn traitorous ‘best friend’ that he was). And now he wanted nothing to do with Stiles, which was for the best, right? All the pain and anguish that Stiles had inadvertently caused him would fade away – given enough time. Derek wouldn’t have to be confronted with the idiotic sidekick who happily compared him to the fire that consumed his whole life, and then clumsily ignored all the incredibly clear signals that were telling him to just _go away_.

Yeah, Stiles was surprised he managed to leave the loft with all ten of his fingers still attached.

_No_ , that damn voice in his head replied. _You know that was never going to happen. Derek hasn’t been that angry, attack first, don’t ask questions later guy for a long time – especially with you. It’s the other way around now,_ you’re _the one that hurts_ him.

Stiles flinched at his own internal monologue. Damn his psyche for being more intuitive than the rest of him. The problem wasn’t that Stiles was stuck with someone who wanted him in ways he couldn’t provide, no. The problem was that until this whole spell disaster, Stiles’ feelings surrounding Derek had never been challenged, he’d never had to clarify them. He’d always been able to put them in the ‘I don’t need to examine those stray thoughts because nothing will ever happen’ basket, along with his occasional musings on Felicia Day or Emilia Clarke. It wasn’t real, and if he didn’t think about it they’d stay unreal.

And then Derek saw him sprawled beneath that tree, smiling that smile and saying things that were supposed to stay in that basket of denial, things that had made a scary amount of sense then, and continued to burrow into Stiles’ head even now. _We’ve saved each other’s skins more often than the rest of the pack put together. We’re there for each other, we’re_ always _there_ …

Stiles shook his head and got out of bed, padding into the bathroom for a drink of water. His face was hooded and drawn in the harsh light that bounced off the mirror and he clenched his jaw in frustration as he met his own gaze in the glass.

“So, what are you going to do about it?” he asked himself. If _Derek Hale_ can come to terms with his emotions, then maybe it’s time you did too.”

No answer from the stupid man in the mirror, but his eyes, oh his eyes were steady and clear.

————————————————————

“Please? It’s just a small favour.”

Melissa McCall side-eyed Stiles suspiciously, but stayed silent.

“Okay,” he said as he clapped his hands together. “I just need you to take a little blood from me.”

Melissa raised an eyebrow. “Why, Stiles? Do you need some tests run?”

Stiles waved an uncoordinated hand at her. “No, no. It’s nothing like that, I just need some blood. From my hearfrmph.”

“From your where?”

Stiles sighed exaggeratedly and looked at the ceiling. “From my… _heartokayandIknow_ —”

“Your heart?! Stiles are you insane?!”

“Shhhhh!” Stiles flapped his hands at her dramatically before leading her into an empty room. “I know, I know it sounds bad, but it needs to be heart’s blood specifically, and I don’t trust that my Wikipedia-gleaned skills are up to the task.”

Melissa narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. “Is this to do with the blood spell you picked up all those needles for a few months ago?”

Stiles suddenly looked uncomfortable and shifted his gaze over to the wall. “Kind of. It’s an extension of it and I just… I need to see something and this is the only way.”

“This kind of procedure is risky, Stiles. There’s a reason you only see people shoving adrenaline-filled needles directly into people’s hearts in trashy action movies. We don’t actually do that in real life.”

“But you can draw blood, right,” he replied.

“…Yes, but there are usually better ways of doing it.”

Stiles shook his head vehemently. “Not this time.” He met Melissa’s eyes, his gaze earnest and determined. So determined.

“Your father is going to kill me,” she muttered.

“Only if he finds out,” Stiles replied – a wan grin on his face.

————————————————————

The space was as boringly white as he remembered and Stiles tried not to think about his real body where it probably lay sprawled face down in the leaf litter of the preserve. He let the strange, absent feel of this place flow over him until he began to spot the first currents of colour bleeding in from the horizon.

“Fingers crossed it isn’t my English teacher.”

The colours kept coming until Stiles was surrounded by a sea of grey and black and the occasional flash of dark blue.

“So far so good,” he remarked to himself, but his nails were digging bloody crescents into his palms as he did so.

When the world stopped churning and flowing with colour, Stiles stood in the upper floor of the loft, Derek’s bed before him in the soft glow of a late sunset. There was no Derek that he could see, but he slowly moved towards the bed anyway, hands reaching out to run across the sun-warmed cotton of the bed sheets.

“Nice aren’t they? They’re not Egyptian cotton or anything, but the thread count’s still high enough to pass for Google’s share price.”

He was leaning casually against the wall behind Stiles, wearing a navy blue long-sleeved shirt and black jeans that looked tight enough to count as a second skin. Stiles swallowed noisily and willed the rest of his body to follow the turn of his head. “So it is you, then. Huh.”

Derek raised a sardonic eyebrow and effortlessly pushed off the wall. “Yeah, it’s me. But then, you knew it was me, that’s why you freaked out so much when you saw my dream-vision, isn’t it?”

Stiles sputtered. “N-no, I… I didn’t know what to think, that’s what this is all about.” He waved his arms at their surroundings as though he were being attacked by bees.

Derek walked slowly, casually over to Stiles, and Stiles tried his best to slowly, casually back away.

“Do you know the saying about flipping a coin?”

Stiles’ eyes shifted to Derek’s hands, where they were tucked, thumbs out, into the pockets of his jeans. “No?”

Derek smiled and tapped his thumbs against the denim. “They say that most times, when you flip a coin – as it’s spinning through the air – you’re already hoping for heads or tails.” He moved forwards and pulled his hands out of his jeans, resting them instead on the flat planes of Stiles’ waist. “You already knew the coin, Stiles. You were already wishing for tails before it even left your hand. Now you’ve got the answer you wanted, what are you going to do about it?”

“You’re not real,” Stiles mumbled, eyes half lidded as he focused on the feeling of Derek’s long fingers fanned across his skin with only a thin t-shirt between them.

“I don’t have to be,” Derek smiled. “Not here, not now.” He turned Stiles around slowly in his grip until they were both facing the giant window at the head of his bed. “Just watch the sunset with me.”

Stiles gazed at the diffuse glow of molten red and gold through the window – Derek a long line of warmth at his back, his breath ghosting past his cheek as he hooked his chin over Stiles’ shoulder.

“Yeah,” he breathed. “I can do that.”

————————————————————

He managed to find the spell in one of the dusty old books that Deaton had lent him for, ‘ _the journey into your own potential, Stiles – that’s what it’s for_ ’. Deaton’s vague assistance aside, the book had been surprisingly helpful, and the ingredients for this spell were blessedly simple. Ginger root, crushed moonstone, saltwater, and a hair from the two _exponentia objecta_.

The last part, oddly enough, would be the most difficult thing to procure. Derek may have gotten back into the swing of things with the pack, but he was avoiding Stiles like the plague. Any time there was a pack meeting, he’d cry off – unless Stiles’ had told Scott ahead of time that he’d be busy, in which case Derek would miraculously be available, according to Scott. Scott of course had started to ask questions – the pattern wasn’t that difficult to spot – but Stiles had asked him to let it drop for now, and Scott – first class best friend that he was – let it.

To say his request to Scott raised some questions was putting it mildly.

The phone crackled and Stiles hoped that Scott wasn’t squeezing it to death – the last thing he could afford right now was a new cell. “You want me to do _what_?”

“Just one hair will do – you’re a wolf, surely you can sniff out a stray one that drops somewhere during the meeting – you don’t have to go plucking it from his head.”

“Why do I need to get a hair _at all_?!”

Stiles rubbed a tired hand across his forehead. “Because your very best friend is asking you to, and it’s to do with the stuff that happened at Derek’s place the other week, and I can’t tell you about it yet, and I might never be able to tell you, but I really need your help, so will you help me _please_?”

There was a pause before Scott’s sigh came across the line. “Fine. But you have to let me talk about my stuff with Kira without groaning or complaining for a full ten minutes.”

Stiles grimaced. “Oh come on, how is that a fair trade?”

“A full ten minutes, dude. That’s the deal.”

“ _Fine_. Just get the hair back to me when the meeting’s over okay? I need to do this tonight before I lose my nerve.”

Scott’s voice was concerned again. “Lose your nerve to do what? Is this dangerous? Could you get hurt? Could Derek?”

“I can’t tell you, no not really, and yeah we both kinda could, but not like that – no blood or severed limbs or anything. Promise.”

“I am a terrible best friend.”

“No you are an _awesome_ best friend.” Stiles grinned as Scott’s long-suffering sigh was replaced with a dial tone.

————————————————————

It sat before him, the sharp smell of the ginger reaching his nose as it swirled through the water amongst the crushed moonstone and the lone dark hair that sat at the base of the glass. The house was dark and silent – it was well into the early hours of the morning, and Stiles had been staring at the concoction for at least fifteen minutes.

“C’mon just do it,” he muttered to himself, wrapping his hands around the glass and bringing it to his lips. Closing his eyes, he opened his mouth and tipped the drink in. It tasted of the sea and the mountains and the stars whirling overhead… and the faintest hint of the forest – dark green and earthy and warm. He dropped the empty glass back on his bedside table and slid himself underneath the covers, willing his heart to slow and his eyes to close.

He wasn’t sure when he crossed over that invisible line between wakefulness and sleep, but suddenly he was standing in the middle of what looked like the High School. There were the dark shapes of people… no, _weres_ moving around him like tigers stalking their prey.

And there was Derek, on his knees, held fast by the hands of two of the Oni as someone… as Stiles meandered up to him.

Only it wasn’t Stiles – it was the nightmare that Stiles so desperately tried to forget – the laughing chaos, the love of pain… The Nogitsune turned around and smiled at Stiles, all teeth and smouldering eyes in the darkness. “So nice of you to join us, Stiles. Now he can watch us _both_ die when I _gut_ us.” It turned back to Derek, whose head hung loose between his shoulders. “How long, Derek, do you think it’ll take before we start _screaming_?”

Stiles shivered and closed his eyes. This was a dream. A lucid dream. If he could get through to Derek, he could take control and move them both away from this nightmare. “Derek… _Derek_.” Derek looked up blearily, his face a mess of dried blood. Stiles’ heart stuttered at how defeated he looked as they locked gazes. “Close your eyes,” he said gently. “Close your eyes and think of somewhere good, somewhere you’re happy.”

_Close your eyes and think of me, the real me_.

There was a pause as Derek stared at Stiles, lost and uncomprehending, before a flicker of emotion crossed his face and he closed his eyes. Stiles followed suit, hoping, _willing_ the world to change around them both.

The gentle hum of a computer reached his ears at the same time as the softness of a mattress beneath him registered against his skin. When he opened his eyes, he was sitting on his own bed in his own room, with Derek standing near the closed window.

“How did we get here?” Derek asked, puzzled.

“This is where we always end up, isn’t it?” Stiles asked, hoping that the nightmare was already fading from Derek’s mind and that he might remember some of the happiness that he’d found in this room.

Derek looked at him, the faintest hint of sorrow laced around his mouth. “We haven’t been here for a long time, Stiles,” he replied quietly.

Stiles looked down at his bare feet where they dug into the carpet. “Yeah, I know we haven’t seen much of each other lately.”

Derek’s expression turned dark and he pushed away from the window. “Oh no, I’ve seen _plenty_ of you. I’ve seen you tortured and killed… lost, hurt, _alone_ …” He wrapped his hands harshly around the back of Stiles’ computer chair and laughed mirthlessly. “Give it long enough and I’ll get to watch you bleed out on those sheets.” He stared at the bed, lost in terrible contemplation, until all the anger seemed to drain out of him and he slumped down into the chair.

Stiles closed his eyes in pain. How did someone with such constant, hopeless, _horrific_ dreams find the strength to keep getting up in the morning? Derek had always seemed so strong, so impervious – as though all the terrible things that happened to him just bounced off his prickly, belligerent hide and left him angrier maybe, but not broken. Not like this.

“I’m not going to die, Derek. You’re not going to lose me, just like you’re not going to lose the pack, or your powers, or our territory.” Stiles leant forwards, propping his elbows on his knees. “Remember what it felt like when we were here in this room, just you and me. Remember what… remember what I said to you in the preserve, when you first found me?” Stiles bit his lip nervously as he watched Derek. “I won’t break you, because we can be stronger together. And I— I don’t even know what I mean by together, because I don’t know what we mean to each other—”

“You mean _everything_ ,” Derek bit out, his eyes luminous.

“What. In the last three months I’ve come to mean _everything_?” Stiles shook his head. “Derek…”

Derek growled and threw the chair away from himself as he stood. “ _Don’t_. That’s the worst one, the worst memory. When you laugh at me, when you look at me like I’m crazy, like there’s nothing between us, like I mean nothing to you.” He strode towards the window and wrenched it open.

“Derek, no, wait!” Stile leap off the bed and grabbed for Derek’s arm. The instant he touched the soft fabric of his shirt, Derek froze. “God, please don’t… I don’t even know what would happen to either of us if you left this room.”

Derek stiffened beneath Stiles’ hand, and Stiles moved it away softly and stepped around Derek’s body until he was standing between him and the window. “That’s not what I mean, and you’d know that if you’d let me talk to you properly, instead of avoiding me like you avoid everything you don’t want to deal with.” He huffed in frustration. “This is not how I wanted this to go.” He looked at Derek, but Derek had his head turned away as if he couldn’t bear to look at him. Stiles looked out his window instead, but all he could see was stars – a vast field of stars, below and above them. Biting his lip, he grabbed at Derek’s hand and tugged. “Come on, follow me.”

Derek’s forehead creased in a reassuringly familiar manner and Stiles fought a smile. “Where?” Derek said.

“Somewhere good, I promise.”

Scrambling through the window and across the steep shingles of the roof was a little difficult – especially with a recalcitrant werewolf on one arm, but Stiles persevered until they finally reached the apex of the roof. Stiles let Derek go and sat down, bracing his feet on the roughened slope. After a wary moment, Derek followed sitting a hands-breadth away. Stiles swallowed roughly and stared out at the starry infinity that surrounded them.

“What did you mean by everything?” he asked quietly.

Derek shuffled his feet and kept staring out into the great expanse. “Hope.”

“Hope is everything?”

Derek turned to Stiles, a look of patient resignation in his eyes. “Imagine a life without hope, Stiles.”

“I— I can’t. I mean, I can, but it’s not—”

“It’s not a life, is it? You can keep going through the motions, but it’s mechanical. Empty. It’s a shell that’s just too stubborn to stop. Give a person like that hope and…”

“And you give them everything,” whispered Stiles, a little horrified. Derek nodded and turned back to the stars. “So that’s what I am to you, hope?”

“You were only ever a fantasy, Stiles, but you were a fantasy I got to visit every night. As long as I kept telling myself that you weren’t real, that you were just a pleasant diversion, I could keep kidding myself that it didn’t really matter. But then you were gone. Just _gone_ , and I realised how much I’d come to need that connection. To need you. Real or a dream, you always make things better, even when you’re driving me crazy.” Derek’s hands fisted so tightly at his sides that Stiles half expected to see blood. “Now I’m just left with the dark parts of you, the reminders of how hope is just another way of getting hurt.”

“You know I did the dream-vison spell too?” Stiles asked conversationally, desperately hoping that his voice wasn’t shaking too badly. “Did the whole ‘heart’s blood, French-speaking, white room’ bullshit and ended up in your loft?” Derek had turned to face him, incredulous. “We watched the sunset together and you smiled at me – like _properly_ smiled. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smile at me like that.”

He was shivering somehow, in this unreal reality, and he wrapped his arms tight around his body as he ignored the heavy silence that was building between them.

“You… Why would I imagine that? It makes no sense, you— _Stiles_ didn’t do the spell like that, it was too dangerous…”

“Yeah, you said I’d faint – still haven’t forgiven you for that one,” Stiles replied. “And it wasn’t then, it was later. Well, it was two days ago actually, but it took me another day to find a dream-walking spell to get _here_.”

Derek’s eyes widened for a moment and then narrowed with dawning suspicion. “And where is here, exactly?”

Stiles had the good grace to look uncomfortable. “Your dreams?”

“My— I’m dreaming? You’re dreaming?” The blood drained from Derek’s face. “ _Stiles_?”

Stiles smiled weakly. “Yeah, it’s me, the real me. The one you’ve been avoiding since we talked at the loft. The one that didn’t know how to show you that you drive me crazy too, but I can’t bear the thought of living without hope any more than you can.”

“You dreamt of me, when you did the spell?”

If Stiles had ever wondered what Derek had sounded like when he was a kid – before his innocence was burnt away – he knew now. Soft and hesitant, and threaded with promise. Stiles shuffled sideways until there was no space between them. “I did. You smiled at me, and you held me, and it felt like coming home, Derek.”

Derek made a pained noise and then he was cradling Stiles’ face in his hands and kissing him desperately. Desperate was good in Stiles’ opinion and he returned the kiss just as deeply, running his thumbs across Derek’s stubble as the warmth of their bodies bled into each other.

After a delicious, haze-filled moment, Stiles pulled back, letting his hands rest on Derek’s face. “I meant what I said before, I don’t know what we are, or what we could be, but I want to find out. And I want to do it in reality – no more dreams or visions.” Remembering what Scott had said to Allison in the white space, he whispered, “I want to know what you taste like, Derek, your scent, what your skin feels like under the sun…”

Derek looked like he wanted to jump him there and then, but instead he exhaled sharply and dragged them both up until they were standing – still so close together that Stiles could feel Derek’s breath ghosting across his lips.

“What’s the best way to wake up from a dream?”

Stiles peered down the sharp slope of the roof and winced. “The sensation of falling?”

Derek smiled sharp and bright and wrapped Stiles’ hand in his own. “Well, then. No time like the present.”

Stiles groaned and protested half-heartedly as Derek led them hand-in-hand down towards the guttered edge, but when the moment came he took the step out into the stars without hesitation, eyes wide open.


End file.
